


cities change before they die

by fallen_woman



Category: Mad Men
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-23
Updated: 2010-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-12 20:19:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallen_woman/pseuds/fallen_woman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't want to go to Kenny's stupid party. Takes place between Season 4x04 and 4x05.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cities change before they die

He didn't want to go to Kenny's stupid preliminary bachelor party. No matter how hard Harry had nagged him in the office and over the phone during dinner ("didn't I see you an hour ago?" Pete asked, incredulous, before slamming the receiver into its cradle).

"The fact that you're fretting about it means you're going to go," Trudy said, clearing the dishes. He winced as she whisked away his plate – there was still a bite of chicken on the rim. Trudy had used the violet dishware tonight, to match the congratulatory flowers that Joan had sent over.

"And miss a night with you?" He walked behind her and laced his fingers around her waist—his favorite activity, as of late.

She kept scrubbing the dishes and didn't swat his hands away. He buried his face in her hair and listened to the rush of the faucet. "Peter, I'm just going to be cleaning out my closet tonight. It's nothing remotely entertaining. Besides, I don't want you protesting when I put my bikinis in storage, since I won't be in any condition to wear them."

"Good thing we went to the Bahamas first," he murmured into her left shoulder. The bed was so near, and she was so warm and soapy.

"Go take a nap." She patted his arm, leaving droplets on his shirt. "I'll wake you up in forty minutes, so you can show up late."

"Kinsey is going to be there," he groaned as he curled up on the couch, kicking aside a pillow. "I'll need to drink before I even reach the bar."

She stooped over him to loosen his tie. "That's very adult of you," she said as she dragged a blanket over him.

He burrowed his face against the cushion, so he could barely breathe. "How am I supposed to be an adult if I'm myself?" he said, right as he fell asleep.

*****

Upon reflection, he did owe this little reunion to Cosgrove, considering how he got the inspiration to chase after Vicks' whole line. The ceiling in The Lion was surprisingly high, and there even was a skylight, not that it did any good in this limp weather. Fortunately, he timed his drinks right — Harry disappeared after two rounds, and Kinsey ducked out just as he was becoming tolerable.

"I wonder if you've had too much," Kenny said to him at the bar, after the last wave of grinning shoulder claps (since when did everyone get so touchy, Pete wondered). "You've actually stopped sulking."

"That's clever." He gulped down the rest of his Whiskey Sour and tried to remember the last time he was out on a Friday night without a suit.

"I appreciate it, you know. I didn't want to do the carousing stuff. Just the old gang."

"Meeting after work to talk about the place we used to work?" He realized, with a touch to his brow, that his forehead was feverish. Too much smoke, too much highball laughter on too little sleep. It was probably raining outside, reluctantly.

"Not all of us got to leave, you know." Kenny put his elbows to the bar (and how did he do that, finding just enough space in the crush of people for his elbows?) and lit a cigarette. "Draper's Chosen People, led out of Egypt."

He had never liked watching Cosgrove smoke. It was like watching a pink, weak-chinned dragon. "Am I supposed to apologize here?"

"You're not supposed to do anything. It's past," he said, ambling his gaze at an arguing or flirting couple ten feet away. The woman's voice rose, sharper. Red face, red dress. Pete wished he could hear the rain. Lane had sent flowers, too. Joan and Lane. Kenny nudged him without nudging him: "Did you know about Harry and Hildy?"

"As in—" he blinked.

"As in, that actually happened."

"That's repulsive." Pete hoped his face was flushed evenly. Sometimes, he got blotchy. "I send her Christmas cards!"

Kenny choke-laughed. "I met Cynthia at Ski Sonnenberg. Party of ten, mostly Columbia fellows. I got to the lodge late, and sat two seats over from her, by the fireplace. Spent the entire night looking at her hands, the side of her face, and she was giving me these little looks, too. After everyone else had gone to bed, I walked up to her, turned her face to me, and kissed her."

He quashed his cigarette and paused for effect. "She pulled back, put her hand to her mouth, and said, 'You shouldn't have done that.' 'Why,' I said, 'because you're married?' 'No,' she said, 'because I have a cold sore.' We had matching bumps, the rest of the trip."

Admittedly, the story was entertaining. Pete raised an empty—now full—now empty—glass. "To matching bumps." His foot on the bar stool knocked against Ken's.

"Woah there." Ken braced him, before knocking off his own drink. "Point being, at the time all I could think was, 'Won't this be a story for the office!' Then I actually fell in love with her, and I thought, 'Damn. Now I can't tell anyone.'"

 _I had your baby, and I gave it away._ He pitched forward, and heard something break. Pictured glass splashing against his feet. "I don't feel so swell."

"Aw, Christ," Ken said, and they were out of Egypt, into the bathroom.

*****

He didn't want to go to the toilet. He wasn't going to heave. All he needed was quiet, and tap water. Somehow, he wedged his head into the sink, with the drip-end of the faucet against his cheek, water streaming sideways into his mouth.

"Wouldn't it be easier splashing water on your face?" Ken's head looked distorted from this angle, or maybe it was the awful orange lighting. In a moment of foresight, Pete had insisted that they bar the bathroom door.

"Shut up," he gargled, and searched his pockets, and Ken handed him his wallet. He didn't want to look in the mirror. He looked terrible in orange. It was quieter here. Two sinks, a marbled gray floor he could pretend was clean. "Why did you stop writing?"

Ken startled, in slow motion. "Stories, you mean?"

"You had _The Atlantic_. You were good at fiction." There was music pouring in through the door, choreographed wailing and a saxophone. The light was more yellow than orange, actually, and Ken was buttered in it. Trudy was probably dreaming by now, with a white bikini clasped to her chest.

"Well, this is real life, isn't it? When you're not hungry anymore, but you still have to eat. You still want to be Creative?"

"I don't know." He looked at the doorknob, at the scarred wooden frame. Someone thought it mattered to write his initials. "JK." Someone thought that his initials mattered. Ken shifted his shoulder against the door, and blocked the letters.

"I had a character based on you. Poor form, I know, but I had to take something out of that office. Harry isn't exactly rich with material, and writing Kinsey would be like doing a painting of a painting." He laughed, tentatively. "I had your scenes all planned out, and now it's… I mean, what am I saying. Look at this. Look at us. You're going to be a father. You're going to be great."

Ken grasped him, not quite on the neck, not quite on the shoulder. It was a loud, muscular kiss on the cheek, so filled with largess that it made Pete ill, so ill that something broke open.

There was a hot, jazzy crescendo as Pete turned his mouth to Ken's, just a little nip, biting without teeth. With a full-body flinch, Ken pushed him back, but didn't punch him.

"Pete?" he said, something delicate crossing his face, and this voice was Trudy switching on the table lamp, this was flannel pajamas and "Tell me a story," or "I'm thirsty," or "I had a nightmare." And Pete sagged into Ken, and there was a puff of breath on his neck like a question, and he answered and answered and answered.

They couldn't very well throw their clothes on the floor, so they kissed harder, Ken pinned to the door, their hands threshing about under each other's jackets. Aside from that one time with Ho Ho in college, this was new, and savage, and good. Because there was no chance of graceful retreat, no conceivable explanation or expiation, because he couldn't even hear his heart over the rustling, it was easy to grab that slender belt buckle, it was easy to sink to his knees and take Ken's cock first in his hand, then his mouth.

It was fat in the middle, and tapered near the head, like a Perfecto cigar, which perhaps had some aerodynamic, if not aesthetic, advantages. Pete did love, though, how heavy it felt in his mouth, as Ken—face averted, eyes shut— blushed down to his hipbones. I could bite it off right now, Pete thought, and the idea made him so hard he had to touch himself. Slowly, shallowly, Ken began to thrust; between that and the moaning, Pete forgot to breathe. A vein pulsed under his tongue, and it came, and he wobbled up and spat into the first sink without tasting.

The blush lingered on Ken, who had to brace himself against the counter. "Let me do you now," he said, quiet.

"Like hell," Pete said, wiping his mouth as Ken unzipped him. And that's how it ended, the two of them grimacing, panting, gripping each other, like it was a handshake.

*****

 

They walked out, casual-like, and hailed a cab in unison. The rain had stopped. Pete noted, with some satisfaction, that Ken's hands trembled when he lit up another cigarette on the curb. He looked too thin in the light from the street lamps, even though Pete knew he had put on weight.

"I had you—well, your character—say this line. In the story I never finished."

"Oh?" Out in the cold, the fever surged through his body, until he could almost smell it. On his wedding night, he had caught a fever. Later, Trudy admitted that she loved how hot his skin was that night, how sick he was. _It made me feel so close to you,_ she said.

A cab came. Cosgrove gestured for Pete to take it. "The line was, 'Years from now, you're going to regret not having destroyed more things.'"

Scooting into the cab, Pete laughed. "That doesn't sound like me at all," he said as he shut the door, the car whisking him back to violet dishes and white flannel pajamas and the same dream he had been having the last four days, the dream in which Trudy stood in front of a fire and said, _Peter, we have to burn everything_ , but he had something in his hand, something he refused to give up. And in the dream he ran away, trying to save that one thing, but when he opened his hand in the dark, it was always empty.


End file.
